Literacy Resources

Science teachers can use science content (science writing tasks, inquiry activities, and reading resources) to help students develop and strengthen their literacy skills. For teachers in states/districts adopting the Common Core State Standards, this is becoming a daily reality. All teachers in each building should help their students strengthen their reading, writing, speaking, and quantitative literacy skills. Here are a few resources that teachers might find helpful. I hope this page grows as more pre-service and in-service teachers find materials and lessons to share with their colleagues!

Resources to help identify CCSS that you can address through reading in the sciences: read this Scholastic article.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/common-core-reading-science-class

Professional Development Organizations

• You can't find a better resource than the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for outstanding science reading materials for students in grades K-12. They team up with the Children's Book Council each year and put together a list of books that they both rank as excellent resources.

  • http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/
• Within the NSTA website you will also find trade books categorized by content area. For example,
  • http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ostb2011.aspx
• the American Library Association is a great resource. You will have to do searches within this website to find titles.
  • here are several resources to teach science through poetry:
    • http://www.ala.org/offices/resources/sciencepoetry
• Some teachers, schools, school districts, and science teacher education programs have disseminated their own lists of science books.
  • http://www.scsk12.org/scs/trpages/Site/Science_fiction.html
  • http://commoncore.dadeschools.net/docs/science/Elementary%20Science/PPSFavoriteBooksK-6.pdf
  • https://www.msu.edu/~stanawa8/Booklist.htm
  • http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/Science-for-kids.html
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A few Publishers have strong collections of both fiction and non-fiction science books.

• National Geographic Society
  • http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/ngs-common-core/?ar_a=1
• HarperCollins Children's book has CCSS resources:
  • http://www.readcommoncore.com/browse?keyword=science&bisac_heading=combined&order=relevance
• Usborne:
  • http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/science.aspx?cat=1&area=S
• Dorling Kindersly:
  • http://us.dk.com/static/cs/us/11/science/intro.html
• Sylvan Dell Publishers:
  • http://sylvandellpublishing.com/

Science Resource Companies may have literacy resources.

• Carolina Biologicals has a vast array of resources for K-12 science and math educators
  • http://www.carolina.com/catalog/search-results.jsp?question=trade%20books%20children&trail=SRCH%3Atrade+books+children%3A7002%3A10840%3A4016%3ABooks+and+Manuals
• Pitsco is usually where teachers can find great physical science resources (like Legos!), but they do a few (not a lot) of reading materials. Most of the resources are for teachers, but there are some books that include reading materials for students. For example, here are K-2 resources:Pitsco
  • http://www.pitsco.com/Books/Grades_K-2&loc=mm2

Remember that Electronic/Media Resources are also excellent resources to teach literacy

• PBS Learning Media
  • http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/search/?q=*&selected_facets=supplemental_curriculum_hierarchy_nodes_exact:1
• Reading Rockets is an organization supported by WETA (a PBS station in Washington, D.C.)
  • http://www.readingrockets.org/extras/stem_series

Is there a resource you think MUST be included here? Please email me (Meena.Balgopal@colostate.edu) so I can review it and add it to this list.